Word: earthly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...believes that it could have worked at the distance (4,660 miles) at which the Lunik swept past the moon, but they would be grateful for any information that the Russians choose to release. Dr. Kuiper believes that the moon's surface is blazing with radioactivity. On the earth, he says, the thick layer of air is the shielding equivalent of 3 ft. of lead or 33 ft. of water, protects the surface from many kinds of tough radiation beating down from space. Kuiper believes that the moon is radioactively contaminated to a depth of 30 ft. below...
...Planets. Nearest planet to the earth is Venus. It is about as big as the earth and has an atmosphere, but it seems even less attractive as real estate than the airless, sun-seared moon. Its atmosphere is so cloudy that outsiders, peering from the earth, can see only its slightly yellowish cloud deck, which sometimes shows faint, impermanent markings...
...Venusian atmosphere contains carbon dioxide. This information does not mean (as many science-fiction writers seem to think) that Venus under its clouds is covered with lush jungles. Earthside plants need carbon dioxide, but their flourishing presence on earth is the reason why the earth's modern atmosphere contains only a trace of CO2. This abundance of carbon dioxide in the Venusian atmosphere is excellent proof that the planet has no earthlike plants...
Probably it has no life at all. Dr. Kuiper thinks that it has no water or free oxygen. Radio waves, which penetrate the murky atmosphere, hint that the temperature of the invisible surface is something like 500° F., which is much too high for the earth's kinds of life. Venus rotates only once in several weeks, making the sunlit side much hotter than the dark side, and causing violent storms that sweep perpetually over its hot, dry deserts...
...Urey still thinks that the clouds in the Venusian atmosphere may be made of water droplets like clouds on earth, but few astronomers agree with him. Dr. Kuiper thinks they are made of fine dust particles of carbon suboxide (0302). In an attempt to prove this theory, he made a mixture of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and exposed it to assorted radiation at the Argonne National Laboratory. Sure enough, carbon suboxide formed, and its molecules stuck together to make particles of yellowish polymer...